D020312

Home Diaries Best Pictures Road Trip

A Rainy University Town

March 12, 2002

Dear Friends and Families,

It's raining. After six months on the road, we've hit a bad weather spell. This morning we left the hotel without our umbrellas. We planned just a short two-block walk to the tourist information office, so how wet could we get? Bad question. After our duties, we retreated to the hotel and waited a bit.

But we are professional tourists so we can not let rain control us. We had a single day to explore Coimbra and waiting was not an option. This is a university town so that's where we must start. The school was started early in the 13th century just as Europe was emerging from the "dark" ages. The school was moved back and forth between Coimbra and Madrid until the 16th century. Reportedly, it remains the premier school in Portugal and a degree from Coimbra is the key into the upper ranks of government and industry.

As soon as the rain calmed to a drizzle, we walked up the hill to the University. We paid our two or three euro entrance fee. I wonder if this can be considered tuition for continuing education? Our first stop was the large "private examination room". Students would be given oral exams, surrounded by seated professors and paintings of stern old kings on the outer walls. Meanwhile, the dean of the school would glare down from his imposing podium over the student's right shoulder. At least that's how the guidebook explained the process and implied that it has remained largely unchanged for a few hundred years.

The most dramatic attraction for tourists at the University is the King John Library. There are over 30,000 books, all from before 1755 and all in Latin, Greek or Hebrew. I wonder if the opulence of the room, the grand bookshelves, and the expansive study tables inspired students or intimidated them. Probably some of both.

From the library, we went into the University chapel, another 16th century space to inspire and intimidate students. The chapel walls are covered in colorful tiles and the ceiling is equally splendid. Hung on the wall is a pipe organ featuring the horizontal trumpets we have seen in Spain and Portugal but not elsewhere. The chapel is not large and the sound from these pipes ringing off the tile walls surely made their mark on students, pious or not.

At a nearby museum display, I was also fascinated by mathematics "books" in the form of ceramic tiles. Presumably these lined the walls of appropriate rooms; therefore, teachers avoided the drudgery of recreating the visual aids from year to year. It's no wonder this was an advanced institute.

Coimbra has other attractions, including an old cathedral (called "Old Cathedral" in Spanish) erected in the 11th century over the foundations of a Moorish mosque. There is also a new cathedral that is 400 years younger but still pretty old by American standards. (Not surprisingly, it is called "New Cathedral") We visited each quickly. I'm not sure how many more old churches I can see without some sort of break.

Next to the New Cathedral was the local historical museum. There were more examples of gory 500-year-old religious art and plenty of Roman and medieval shards. Nice displays but again, enough already.

Just before we walked out, a museum attendant motioned us down to the basement where we found ourselves in a maze of tunnels built by the Romans in the 1st century. They originally served as the foundation for a forum just above. Below this level, there is yet another set of structures, including an even older Roman aqueduct. The hill at Coimbra has been settled for so long that even the 11th century cathedral should really be called nothing more than "middle-aged".

We took one of the narrow streets off the hill of the university. Thirty years ago, the Portuguese dictator Salazar destroyed half of the old meandering streets to make room for expansion of the university, his alma mater. Luckily, there are still enough old parts remaining to make this a special "village", as locals call it. We saw one rambling old place in particular that looked like a project we should renovate. We probably would replace the "Nuclear, Nao Obrigato" (Nuclear, No Thank You) sign in the upstairs window.

Normally, we are not inclined to much nightlife at all. We have a whole range of excuses for not staying out late, but somehow on our one night in Coimbra, we tried to break our pattern. We started with a simple dinner in a restaurant recommended by our parking garage attendant Pero. Now, this is not the same as the Michelin recommendation or even the Mobil guide, but it was OK enough. The best part was that 84-year-old Pero was there and he showed us the whole restaurant, including the back room where a Friday night party was just starting of a couple dozen black-robed students. The scene could have been from 500 years ago except for the cell phones stuck in several ears.

After that, we went to a bar for a "fado" performance by a couple groups of university students. We shared our table with two guys, one of whom was himself a fado guitar player. They gave enough background to understand what was going on. They explained that, in Coimbra, men perform all fado and the standard group is one singer and two guitar players. The bar for this night's performance was a beautiful space that had been part of the neighboring church until it had been separated off recently. "Recent" on Coimbra scale meant about 150 years ago.

This was a good last day in Portugal. The rain had slowed down the touring, but overall, the day was memorable from the historic chambers of one of the oldest universities in Europe to the sound of fado. We'll miss Portugal.

Take care and go ask for a fado record from Tower Records. Specify Coimbra style.

John and Marianne

Previous Diary

Next Diary

Home Diaries Best Pictures Road Trip

This page created on a Macintosh using PhotoPage by John A. Vink.